Hi,
Just a few reflections.
I definitively agree on the crop factor issue. But it would be possible to use the IQ 250 on an Alpa FPS or Hartblei HCam with Canons 17 and 24 lenses both being very good.
Regarding the Rodenstock lenses, let's see how all test CI and DT makes come out.
With regard to the cost, Phase One obviously feels it is a reasonable or feasible price for the product.
Best regards
Erik
Sometimes it helps to take a look at a different but related market space.
IBM let go the possibility of making a lot of money on the server space with Power. After the Power5+ they got a definitive advantage against basically everybody. What they do was price the systems out of most of the potential clients.
It seems non sense for the people that is not on the CS /IT environment, but it's classic modern IBM.
I believe that this strategy (price the higher price possible) is useful when you lose confidence in your product. You have the convinced that there is no way out. You are sure that no pricing or improvement with increase volume. If that is the case, the proper pricing is the higher one that will not lead to a faster dead. In few words :You get as much as you can and then you sale what is left.
IBM just accepted this quarter that the server lines will never get back to the profit levels.
They were convinced of this (my intuition) from long time ago. It became a self fulfill prophecy.
They did have an opportunity to grow when the workloads moved to processor agnostic web architectures. They did not launch a killer strategy even when Sun was with no competitive processor and HP was fighting with underperforming itaniums. The space has change, the opportunity gone. Now the marker have competitive processors and the cloud has handle the kingdom to x86.
PhaseOne is fighting for medium format. Hasselblad was confuse under the previews CEO. They have to solve the price issues and even more important understand that they can't be in the cutting edge of the technology for longer periods of time*. They need to focus in their core advantages, including low volume. That means yields are not as pressing, and you can give better service.
Sensor size is one of the key advantages; The crop factor high end camera is a mistake (but maybe was the only option). I hope a bigger sensor is coming (48mm x36mm ). Now if Leica and Pentax (that happens to be a Japanese company) are leading we are for a not so funny ride.
Best regards,
J. Duncan
* An example will be Intel, even with the (almost) monopoly on the server space the Xeons can't be stage of the art. They are previews generation systems improved for server loads (an example is multiprocessing and number of PCIe lanes). The sensor on the IQ250 will be state of the art but I will expect for it (or the next one) to have a longer cycle that mainstream sensors.